How-To Guide: Dragoon
Legend of Dragoon One of the coolest jobs in the entire game, towering over monsters with large lances and spears, and having a faithful dragon pet at your side at all times. Dragoon is one of the best damage-dealers for the hate threshold, as well as the best damage-dealers for any form of avian monster. Dragoons, like all in the series, can jump high in the sky and land on the target with their spear pointing down, stabbing them completely. In this game, they get three different kinds. Although Dragoon isn't as flashy as Dark Knight, and doesn't get the same immediate damage output, Dragoon gets amazing TP gain like a Samurai, and with its damage (and ultimately enmity) is shared with your little blue pet, you can easily overpower any other damage-dealer with little or no hate problems. Best of all, if that's not enough to get parties to love you, you can shed almost every iota of enmity in a heartbeat by jumping so unbelievably high you literally leave the enemy's perception range! Polearm-class weapons are amazing at opening skillchains, but if you should close one, your wyvern's breath (used after a weapon skill) can also magic burst. If a Dragoon is subbing Samurai, they will be almost neck-and-neck with TP gain over time. Dragoons can solo quite well. When subbing a mage-type job and using a spell, your wyvern will heal you. Please note: This is only a guide. Please add anything if it is needed, and take away anything that is either untrue or not needed. Job-Race Combinations Please note that race is the absolute last thing you should worry about when picking a job. Anything said here is seriously exaggerated. A single piece of gear can often make up for a race's negligible lack in a stat. Every race also gets "Race Specific Equipment", or "RSE", that will boost a race's stats to equal, or possibly even surpass other races. Hume * Providing an average amount of all of Dragoon's necessary stats. HP for taking hits, and vitality for both taking hits and for your Jump damage. Dexterity and strength also play vital roles in this job, as it is a damage-dealer by nature. For soloing or for parties that need a little light healing action, having average MP will mean you can cast more spells for your Wyvern to heal to. A very solid job-race combination. Elvaan * If you want to take enormous damage to the next level, Elvaan is for you. Armed with the highest strength in the game, Elvaan will certainly not disappoint those who want to deal the highest-damaging hits in the game. Elvaan also has great vitality and HP for survivability, and the vitality again for Jump damage. The only downside to an Elvaan Dragoon is the low dexterity, meaning low accuracy. This low accuracy can be made up by a lot of gear, as well as two sets of Accuracy Bonus traits the job gets naturally. Tarutaru * A fine job-race combination. Supplying average dexterity makes up for low strength for overall normal damage over time. Agility makes up for low vitality for survivability, but ultimately low Jump damage is the downside to this. However, in the best side of things, Tarutaru get the highest MP in the game, meaning they can solo incredibly well, or help out in parties that need light healing power. Mithra * Mithra makes up for Dragoon's biggest problem: accuracy. They have a great amount of dexterity and agility for critical hits, accuracy, and avoiding hits. The high agility makes up for low vitality, but unfortunately means low Jump damage overall. However, Mithra have very handy all-round stats otherwise, and since it provides a large amount of a very needed stat, anything else is easily made up. Vitality can be made up by a lot of equipment. Galka * Proving to be amazing Dragoons with excellent vitality and HP, meaning great survivability and even greater Jump damage. Galka also have a large amount of strength, and even a fair agility and dexterity. Though Galka have low MP naturally, their RSE can boost their MP to a level far superior to any other race. Their naturally high HP also makes it easier and safer to solo, since your wyvern will only heal you once you're at 1/3rd health (1/2 with your AF headpiece). Equipment Choices Weapon * Dragoons get it incredibly easy, because they get only weapon in the game they actually excel at: Polearms. The reason why I say this is because it’s really easy to keep your skill capped, albeit a slow weapon type and therefore a hard skill to cap. Some think that slow weapons mean it hurts more when you miss. That simply isn’t the case. If you had a weapon that took half the time to attack, you’d miss twice as often. TP gain is regulated depending on your delay anyway. Polearms are very powerful weapons, and as piercing weapons, are unbelievably great against any avian (flying) monsters. Bats, birds, you name it, you kick butt against it. Dragoon has a lot of Polearms to choose from, between Spears, Halberds, and Lances. Lances are incredibly high-damage and high-delay, and as a result have a great damage over time. Early on, you’ll want Spears, but later on, it’s all a matter of choice. Even around Lv.20, the Platoon Lance is a good choice. Polearm is also great because of the weapon skills it gets. Double Thrust is amazing at a low level. Penta Thrust (penta meaning ‘five’) is five hits! It’s amazingly powerful and at a relatively low level, Lv.49. * In certain situations, Dragoons may find themselves using staves. Dragoon has a "B-" in Staff, and there are quite a few that are good for the job. Staves are useful when soloing because of the all-mighty weapon skill Spirit Taker, which converts the damage you dealt to the monster into your own MP. This guaranteed MP-restoration is very nice when using a magical support job for soloing, assuming it doesn‘t miss. There's even a Staff weapon called the Wyvern Perch which gives your wyvern a whopping 50 HP, which not only helps its survivability, but also increases the HP restored with Healing Breath. Armor * Dragoon has an average variety of armor to choose from, between light-melee armor including Harness, Leather, Scale armor, plus a few heavy-type sets in the highest levels. It doesn’t get any mage-type cloth armor (not that you’d want it), nor does it get most heavy plate armor. This actually hinders Dragoon in that it doesn’t get to wear the awesome Haubergeon body piece. It does, however, get access to the Scorpion Harness and a ton of other good pieces. And now that it gets a second tier Accuracy Bonus, it’s not a sorely inaccurate job. With that said, it’s very powerful and relatively accurate, so armor choice is totally up to you. Since more of the better weapon skills require both strength and dexterity, having either or both works. You might even want some vitality for Jumping, and HP/MP is useful for soloing with a mage support job. Mostly every stat is useful, just not charisma. Work with what your race needs, or what you think you need. Tiny edit by Stealthwolf of Titan, i just wanted to say that every end game dragoon dont just tp build and weapon skill in one armour set. Try to have a Haste/Store TP set to build tp and then weapon skill in a pro str set for the dragoons commonly used Penta Thurst. Walkthrough Advanced Job Quest Quest: The Holy Crest * This quest has some really great cutscenes and a wicked fight. First off, you’ll need to be Lv.30 or higher, and have access to the Chateau d’Oraguille in San d’Oria, meaning Rank 2+ in San d’Oria or Rank 2 Mission 3+ in the other two. Your first actual step is to talk to Arminibit in Port San d’Oria’s Cargo Room A. Next, go to the Oubliette (underground dungeon) under the Chateau, talk to Novalmauge. You will watch a cutscene and be asked to bring back an egg. Talk to Morjean in Northern San d’Oria (L-7). After you talk to him, you should have the quest “The Holy Crest” in your list. Purchase a pickaxe (or more than one, in case it breaks). Now grab a Teleport-Mea or run to Tahrongi Canyon, then enter the Maze of Shakhrami (entrance is at K-5). Look for an Excavation Point, then trade your pickaxe or use it in items to excavate. You are looking to pick a Wyvern Egg out of the rubble. Once you successfully find your soon-too-be partner’s egg, return to Morjean. After a brief cutscene, head to Meriphataud Mountains. Follow Drogaroga’s Spine as far east as it goes (you’ll need to follow it on the north side). On the south side, there is a ??? at K-8. Trade your Wyvern Egg to the ??? and receive another cutscene. Head back down to the Chateau and talk to Rahal in the Royal Knight’s Quarters. He will give you a key item. Now grab a friend or two. The fight you are about to do is soloable by a Lv.45 or so melee player, or a Lv.50 mage player. You can also take in a full party of Lv.30 or a half-party of Lv.40. Either way, it’s not too difficult of a fight, but you will need some help. Note that only people on this quest or have previously completed it may help you. Everyone else won’t be allowed in. You will have to defeat Cyranuce. After you beat him, you will receive one final cutscene, and the job Dragoon will be your’s. Congratulations! (If at any time you want to change your Wyvern name, talk to Fouvia in Norg, near the Auction House and give her 9,800 gil. This will also give you more options than your initial list to choose from.) Soloing 1 to 10 * Starting out is just as fun as ending off. No, you won’t get any fancy abilities yet, but you still get a little Wyvern pet by your shoulder all the time. Start off by making sure you have a good Polearm-type weapon, and some decent armor. Before you head outside, get Signet, then when you do get outside, call your Wyvern. Now start beating on things. Once you get to 5 Polearm skill, you can start using Double Thrust. It’s a great weapon skill, all the way to Lv.49, when you can get Penta Thrust. Your support job determines how your wyvern does things. See Support Jobs further down the page for more details. Choose a powerful support job like Warrior if you want to get the most bang for your buck, or a defensive support job like White Mage if you want to out-last your enemies. Make habit of grabbing Signet before you go outside. Not only will it make soloing a lot easier through defense and evasion bonuses, but it will also allow you to rest HP (and MP, depending on your sub) without losing TP, and will also earn you conquest points with which to spend on items. Valkurm 10-20 * You get Jump once you hit Lv.10. This immediately places you at the top of the TP-gaining list until about Lv.30, when Samurai gets Meditate. It’s basically a free hit that can be used once every minute and a half. As a Dragoon, you must remember that in no way are you a tank, and in no way are you a puller. Also, even if you sub a Mage job, you won’t be in any way a main healer. At Lv.10 you get an Attack Bonus, and that should tell your whole party you are a damage-dealer. No matter what you sub, you’ll probably out-damage and out-perform a lot other damage-dealers at these levels. I personally suggest you pick up some accuracy-boosting equipment like dexterity. More defense is probably better at these levels in terms of armor. You should at all times have Signet. The recent Signet buff that made it so you can rest HP without losing TP is a godsend for Paladins, Dark Knights, and Dragoons. It simply means that you can, in fact, rest for your Wyvern without losing TP. No one can heal your Wyvern, and Goblin’s Bomb Tosses are area-effect and will greatly harm your little pet. I suggest you rest at every chance you get when you fight them, or any other area-effect-spamming monsters. In these levels, a good support job option is Warrior, mainly because it adds Provoke, and you can handle a few hits if things are going poorly for your primary tank. Mid-levels 20-40 * In these levels, Dragoon also rises above a lot of the other damage-dealers in terms of performance. At Lv.25, you can start sharing your HP with your Wyvern using Spirit Link. Just remember to save that for either dire emergencies, or after fights. Using it during fights just wastes the healer’s MP and potentially endangers him or her. In these levels is also where Dragoon becomes slightly better at soloing because of this very job ability. Lv.30 is where Accuracy Bonus comes into play, and you can be incredibly thankful for the +10 Accuracy. Especially when Lv.35 rolls around and you can start using High Jump. It’s like Jump, but now it sheds a tiny bit of enmity and deals slightly more damage than Jump, but has twice the recast timer. However, now you have two completely free hits, giving you a ton more TP. If you are using high-delay Lances now instead of Spears, that’s even more TP for you. Your AF Weapon * Your Peregrine AF weapon is actually quite good. It has beautifully high damage, and a high damage over time ratio, so you get the most out of your weapon, plus it has a dexterity and vitality boost for a tiny accuracy/critical rate boost, and a small Jump bonus. It’s a Lv.42 weapon, and is beaten by a Lv.48 one, but that’s a lot longer than most AF weapons. * Luckily, this quest is quite a bit easier than your advanced job quest. You will, however, need a Lv.75 damage-dealer friend (or come yourself if you have a Lv.75 job, (a level 60 PLD can easily solo this as well)) with a White Mage or Blue Mage support job. Once you get Lv.40 or higher, you’ll be able to get this quest. First of all, you need to talk to Miaux in Northern San d’Oria just outside the second-floor entrance to the Blacksmith’s Guild. After you get the quest, get a Teleport-Altep and either Chocobo or run to H-8 as your Lv.75 job, or with your friend. There is a ??? there, used to spawn the notorious monster Antica you need to fight. Centurio I-III is a Paladin-type monster. If your friend is subbing Blue Mage, get him or her to try Head Butting the beast if he tries casting a Cure spell on himself. Once you kill it, click on the ??? again to receive a key item. Go back to Miaux to claim your reward. Congratulations! You now have your Peregrine. Mid-High Levels 40-60 * By now you’re going to be salivating over your Lv.60 headpiece and your other AF. You’re also probably going “holy crap, 10 more levels and then I can use Super Jump!” Yeah, it’s a really good thing to have. Super Jump sheds almost every iota of your hate, giving you now the TP gain of a Samurai (sans Meditate), the damage of a Dark Knight (without the crazy enmity gain), and the added bonus of hate control (like a Thief). An incredibly well-rounded damage-dealer with a little pet to boot. That’s actually the major benefit of a Dragoon- you’re capable of dealing almost twice as much damage as all of the other damage-dealers without the risk of dying. How? Well, even before Super Jump, your Wyvern also deals damage-- damage that adds to your, and ultimately your whole party’s overall damage-- yet all the hate doesn’t go to you. Now, I’m not saying your wyvern is going to become as powerful or high-damage as you, but the idea is potentially there. And now that you can jump so far out of your enemy’s perception range, he actually forgets about you. Your AF is actually quite useful, and worth the wait. Your Artifact Armor * It’s in general a very amazing set of equipment, but is ever-so-slightly shadowed by some other pieces of equipment. Your first set is your Lv.52 leg pieces, the Drachen Brais. These give both you and your Wyvern a small boost to HP. They also increase your Ancient Circle’s duration by 30 seconds, allowing your party to take on Dragons a lot easier. Next are your Lv.54 boots. Unfortunately, these are shadowed by a few other pieces of equipment for party-use, but for soloing they’re great. Always have them on you and macro them in for Jumps, as they increase the damage. The Evasion Skill and agility will help you soloing, and their defense and HP will help you take on monsters with less worry. Your hand pieces at Lv.56 are great for any scenario. They increase your dexterity, and HP, plus have a decent defense rating, and they also give your Wyvern a slight accuracy boost. For when you’re soloing, the Parrying Skill +10 may save you a few hits here and there. Now, your body piece is actually very good. The only problem is, it’s not as accepted or good as the Scorpion Harness, and is actually one level higher than it. Decent defense, and a vitality boost, not to mention the amazing “Adds Regen effect to wyvern”. If anything, use this whenever you’re not actually fighting, and always have it on hand for macroing in for Jump use. Finally, your AF headpiece at Lv.60. It’s literally as amazing as it looks. Gives you a decent HP increase and resistance to lightning-based attacks. It also has some really weird mind+5 in there (I guess for your spells when subbing White Mage?). But where this helmet really shines is its “Wyvern uses breaths more effectively”. When on an offensive wyvern, it will use its breaths specifically targeted to your target’s weakness. This means less chance for it to resist, and if you close a skillchain, more damage overall. When you have a defensive or multipurpose Wyvern, it will use its Healing Breaths at a much higher amount of HP. Normally, you’d have to wait until you were at one-third (one-quarter if multi) HP before your Wyvern thought it would be time to heal you. However, with your Drachen Armet, your Wyvern will heal you if you’re at half HP (one-third if multi)! This saves you a lot of worry. If you can spam your spells, by subbing Blue Mage or something, you can easily heal yourself or a party member in need. High Levels 60-75 * Now that you have your Drachen Armet and other really cool artifact equipment, you can solo quite a bit easier than you could before. It also means that this is your final stretch and can use your final few, yet incredibly amazing-looking weapon skills, and a bunch of great pieces of equipment. However, throughout the game, you won’t really change a lot of strategy, that’s why I left out any really big tips or anything- I can’t think of any. It’s a very straight-forward and easy job to play as, but at the same time is really amazing. Now you can move into your end-game scenarios and get your even more awesome relic armor set. There are three unbelievably awesome polearms that you can use by Lv.75 that are great for any Dragoons who cannot have the fully-upgraded relic polearm. These weapons are the Mezraq, Thalassocrat, and Valkyrie's Fork. Any one of those will make people say 'wow' when they examine you. Good luck and have fun! End-Game * At Lv.75, Dragoon subbing Samurai do very well in situations with many relatively weak mobs such as Dynamis, Limbus, merit parties, etc. Penta Thrust is generally the weaponskill of choice, though a properly geared Dragoon with access to Drakesbane is capable of impressive damage. Wheeling Thrust seems to have fallen by the wayside, even on some HNMs, due to Drakesbane's high base stat mods and multi-hit nature. Wheeling Thrust still makes its presence felt on high DEF HNMs, however. Support Jobs Dragoon is quite support-job reliant. The support job determines how the Wyvern acts in battle. * Offensive Wyverns will use elemental Breath attacks whenever you perform a weapon skill. If you close a skillchain, this means that your Wyvern can occasionally Magic Burst too. Magic Bursting their Breath attack will only affect the resist rate, not overall damage. Offensive Wyverns are obtained by subbing either BST, MNK, PUP, RNG, SAM, THF, WAR, COR, or DNC. * Defensive Wyverns are quite different. They won’t use elemental Breaths when you perform a weapon skill, but instead remove any status ailments. As time goes on, your Wyvern will become better at removing ailments. Whenever you cast a spell, your Wyvern will heal you or a party member, as long as you or they are at one-third or lower HP. With the Drachen Armet (AF helmet) equipped, one-half or lower HP. To get a defensive Wyvern, sub WHM, BLM, SCH, RDM, SMN or BLU. (Note: /SMN is incapable of Healing Breath) * Multipurpose Wyverns will heal you (not other members) if you cast a spell. The difference to defensive is that they will only heal you if you’re at one-quarter HP, or one-third if you equip your Drachen Armet. Like the offensive Wyvern, multipurpose Wyverns will use elemental Breaths, but won’t be as powerful as when offensive. To get a multipurpose Wyvern, sub PLD, DRK, NIN, or BRD. Warrior * Warrior will always play a big role in the hearts of any damage-dealer. Warrior gives access to a wide variety of job abilities and other useful tidbits. You would generally use this for partying, so Provoke wouldn’t help much. However, if you have a small two or three-person static party, you may wind-up tanking, which isn’t always a bad thing. The two most prominent pieces of a Warrior support job are quite obviously Berserk at Lv.30, giving you +25% Attack and -25% Defense for 3 minutes, with a nice 5 minute recast timer, and Double Attack at Lv.50, allowing you to occasionally fire off two consecutive hits, giving you even more damage and even more TP. It can also activate on Jumps. Warrior also gives Warcry for Lv.70, allowing strong skillchains. It will actually help in terms of stats too, giving a fair chunk of strength and dexterity. Thief * Another very useful support job for Dragoon. It basically gives all of your enmity gained through your ridiculously high damage more of a use than just shedding it every three minutes or so. With Sneak Attack and Trick Attack, combined with a weapon skill, you can both increase your own damage by a truckload, while raising the hate threshold for yourself and everyone else in the party, since Trick Attack gives all hate gained in the attack to the person in front of you. Sneak Attack and Trick Attack also stack with your jumps. It gives you a bit of a supporting role in the party as opposed to strictly damage-dealer. It also makes things fun and interesting. However, unless your party desperately needs help managing hate, using this support job in an experience party sacrifices a significant amount of offensive potential. Samurai * A support job that started unbelievably amazing, then went bad, and is now amazing again. Samurai is the TP master, and Dragoon is close behind (occasionally pulling ahead of it after certain levels are hit). Samurai will give you Store TP, allowing for more TP per connected hit, as well as some amazing job abilities. At Lv.40, you get a job trait called Zanshin, allowing you to attack a second time if you happen to miss. At Lv.50, you get a job ability called Hasso. Hasso only works when you equip two-handed weapons, but as a Dragoon, that isn’t a problem. Hasso works infinitely with a one-minute recast and five-minute duration, and gives the user a beautiful strength boost (between 3-5, depending on your level), a +10 accuracy boost, and attack speed +10%. This more than makes up for the loss of Berserk and Double Attack. If that still doesn’t tickle your fancy (what does that mean, anyway?) you get Seigan, Hasso’s “cousin” job ability at Lv.70, providing you with an enormous boost to survivability. Coupled with Third Eye, this combination can make you even more survivable than a Ninja, and you may even counter when it’s active. If that’s still not enough to make you think this is a great job-sub combo, at Lv.60, you get Meditate, almost instantaneously boosting your TP 60%!! Coupled with Jump and High Jump, you can very easily skillchain with yourself. Dancer * An alternative to the usual mage support job for soloing, it combines both healing (and overall survivability), as well as the usual offensive Wyvern benefits. Subbing Dancer will give you access to Sambas, for a slight “regen”-type effect, Waltzes, for cures consuming TP instead of MP, Steps, for enfeebling, and Flourishes like Animated Flourish to further help your own self out. If you use a few Steps, then use Animated Flourish, you can get a “Provoke”-like effect, allowing your wyvern to have even more survivability. Dancer also gives a Sneak/Invisible dance, saving you a little bit of money when going for point A to point B. This support job is most relevant in a duo situation where you’re the tank. Opening fights with Animated Flourish, then performing a number of other great feats, while allowing yourself to perform the odd curing Waltz. For soloing, you can also get an Erase dance called Healing Waltz that will remove an effect, making up for the loss of the Remove abilities of your wyvern. White Mage * White Mage is a great support job for any soloing Dragoon, providing Protects, Shells, enfeebles, and a wide variety of means to get your Wyvern to heal you. Compared to other defensive Wyvern choices, White Mage adds both a large amount of MP, Sneak, Invisible, and at Lv.50, Reraise. The most effective way to get your wyvern to heal you is with the nearly instant-cast Barspells such as Barfira or Barwatera. Black Mage * An alternative to White Mage. Black Mage also gets a lot of MP, and you can use quick spells like Bio. You can enter fights with one of three different Spikes, and can Warp or Escape if things go wrong, or you’re just done for the day. All other spells would be mostly useless, mind you. Red Mage * A fine alternative to White Mage. Though it doesn’t get the same MP, it gets the like of single-target Bar-spells, allowing them to use only 6 MP for a huge cure effect. It also adds Fast Cast for in case you have any problems getting spells off, or need to recast them very frequently. Scholar * Another alternative to other mage support jobs. Scholar provides the “Arts” to eliminate some casting time, recasting time, and MP consumption. However, it pays the price of having no decent enfeebles and no decent spells. On the other hand, since Scholar can potentially increase your skill levels to “B”, you can get Drain and Aspir off quite easily. Scholar, like White Mage and Red Mage, also provides Sneak and Invisible. But unlike the other two, Scholar can get Regen II for solo or party purposes. Another point of interest for the subjob Scholar is "Sublimation", which will return MP to you that you have consumed. This will make rest times shorter, and experiance points come at a quicker rate. Blue Mage * Providing incredibly fast and quite useful spells for the Dragoon on the solo go. Blue Mage gets amazing spells like Head Butt to not only stun the monster, but also allow your Wyvern to heal you.(The accuracy of Head Butt when subbed is not very reliable, it might actually hit the mob but the stun is hard to activate.) Blue Mage also gets a number of other useful spells like Cocoon, boosting your defense by a whopping 50%. Although all non-self-targeted spells are quite useless since your low Blue Magic skill means a ton of resists and misses, many of them are very fast casting and require almost no MP to use, making them very useful to trigger Healing Breath with. Wild Oats is excellent to give the mob a -VIT enfeeble and Sprout Smack gives them Slow. You can use Foot Kick and Power Attack to trigger Healing Breath because they use 5 MP and have a half-second cast time. Dragoon as a Support Job * Really, subbing Dragoon gives almost all of the benefits from the job itself. The only thing it doesn't give is the Wyvern. With that said, the Jumps, its awesome traits, and awesome stats are all still a great boon to whoever wants to sub Dragoon. Let's also not forget the support job equipment; Dragoon's is one of the best. Two pieces give Haste+, one gives Attack+, and one gives polearm skill. As you may have guessed, it's actually a great sub for Samurai, and also really good for anyone else with a hankering for Haste. Overview of Job Abilities, Traits, and Spells Your Two-Hour Ability * Spirit Surge wasn’t always Dragoon’s two-hour ability. Before, Call Wyvern used to be it, and that really didn’t do the trick. Spirit Surge, however, is amazing. Essentially what happens is you and your wyvern fuse together. When this happens, your attacks become quite a bit faster (25% faster), you get some of your wyvern’s max HP (not really, but it does give you +15% of your own max), some of your wyvern’s current HP, and your wyvern’s current TP. Basically, you become like a god for the one-minute duration. While this ability is active, you can’t use Call Wyvern, which makes sense. Also, the second you use this job ability, all three of your Jumps’ recast timers are immediately brought back to 0. Typical strategy is to use all three, then Spirit Surge, then all three again. The reason it resets your Jumps’ recast timer is because it also gives them each really interesting effects and gives them almost 100% accuracy. Jump itself will lower the target’s defense by about 20%. High Jump lowers the target’s TP by an amount proportional to damage dealt. Super Jump will not only still reduce your enmity almost entirely, but it will also lower the enmity of the party member closest behind you from the monster’s point of view by about 50%. This is a heck of a lot better than simply just calling your wyvern! Job Abilities *Call Wyvern was once Dragoon’s two-hour, but is now reduced to 20 minutes. It does exactly what the name implies- calls your wyvern to fight by your side. Your wyvern is quite a bit faster, but less damaging than yourself, and its role is greatly determined by whatever your support job is. *Ancient Circle is a one-minute duration, five-minute recast job ability learned at Lv.5 that gives everyone in the area effect a “Dragon Killer” trait. This is one of the least useful ones to have, since you won’t fight many, if any dragon-type monsters until far later on in the game. The only exception is Puks. It also gives a very tiny amount of enmity, if you should want it for that reason. *Jump is Dragoon’s specialty. It’s useable every minute and a half when you get it at Lv.10. When used, your character does a minor jump, and lands on the monster with his or her polearm stabbing downwards, then jumps back. It’s not very long range, so don’t use it to pull. It’s about as powerful as a normal attack, but damage is determined by vitality than attack and strength. It also gives the TP of a normal hit. Also like a conventional attack, it can miss. When used with Spirit Surge active, it will lower the target’s defense by about 20% on top of the damage it normally deals. *Spirit Link kinda-sorta links you to your wyvern, in that it will give some of your HP to your wyvern. Since White Mages and other people can’t heal your wyvern, you can give some of your’s to it to heal it, and then you can be healed yourself. It’s learned at Lv.25 and can be used every three minutes. *High Jump is learned at Lv.35, and is basically very similar to Jump. It can be used every three minutes, deals quite normal damage, and gives normal TP, plus it also can miss. The difference is, instead of giving hate, High Jump will actually take a tiny bit away. This just makes sense, since your character jumps quite high before he or she lands on the target. When used after Spirit Surge, it will also lower the target’s TP by a little bit, depending on how much damage it hits for. *Super Jump is quite a bit different than Jump and High Jump, in that it gives no TP and deals no damage, and therefore can’t miss. Your character just basically jumps into the stratosphere and the monster forgets about them. You jump out of the enemy’s perception range and drop almost every iota of your enmity. At the same time, your wyvern will perform the “Super Climb” ability, and fly up with you. Your wyvern won’t lose hate, so if you’re almost down for the count, but your wyvern is still okay, you can drop your hate and your wyvern will keep its. This is really useful in parties right after a powerful weapon skill, especially since it can be used every three minutes and therefore about once per fight. Also, since you are untargettable while airborne, it can be used to grant brief invulnerability. The timing can be tricky, but Super Jump can be used to 'dodge' AoEs and cancel spells that are being cast on you if you are airborne when they go off. When used after Spirit Surge, the person in the party closest behind you will lose half of their enmity too. *Angon is one of two useful meritable job abilities. What it does is launches a javelin at the target, breaking some of its defense. The defense lowered is set about 20%, and its duration depends on how many merits are active on it. With one, it’ll only last 30 seconds, but with full, it can last up to one and a half minutes. It can be used once every three minutes, too! Angon doesn’t deal any damage on its own, and as a result, it will not wake sleeping targets either, or give TP. *Deep Breathing is another incredibly useful job ability acquired through merits. What it does is effectively doubles your wyvern’s “Breath” abilities, both healing and elemental. It also allows its elemental breath attacks to have a non-elemental nature , reducing most resists. It lasts either one breath attack or three minutes; whichever occurs first. It can be used once every fifteen minutes and can be brought down to five minutes with full merits. Job Traits *Attack Bonus is acquired at Lv.10 and is your first mark as a damage-dealer. It unfortunately doesn’t stack with any other Attack Bonus traits, but that shouldn’t matter much. This trait will give you a permanent +10 attack power, but Dragoon doesn’t get any other tiers. *Dragon Killer is one of the less-useful “killer” traits, as it will only really work when fighting dragons; specifically solo or in a small party. Generally, the only dragons fought are in either large-scale parties, or for end-game stuff, so unless you grab unruly amounts of hate, this shouldn’t even faze you. On the other hand, it’s a free trait, so what the heck, right? What it does is occasionally “intimidates” dragon-type monsters, stopping any attacks, abilities, and even spells from casting. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a nice free hit every so often. *Accuracy Bonus is the saviour of any damage-dealer, especially one that attacks as slowly as Dragoon. You get your first tier Accuracy Bonus at Lv.30, giving you +10 accuracy, and a second one at Lv.50, giving a total accuracy +22. It’s a very noticeable amount. *Empathy is what most Dragoons merit right off the hop. Meriting this fully, I’d suggest you merit Spirit Link fully too, since it’s a trait based off that ability. What it does is copies one (or up to five, depending on merits) of your positive status effects to your wyvern, duration included. This transfers a large number of positive effects such as Berserk, Regen, Protect, and even such spells as Cocoon! *Strafe is probably the least useful thing you can merit, but it does still have some use. Each time this trait is merited, your wyvern’s breath attacks get a +5 magic accuracy bonus, leading to less resists. Honestly, though, you’d be far better off meriting Deep Breathing if damage is what worries you. See Also